Comments on: T-SQL – Using a parameter in SELECT TOP clause

By: Dao T

Dao T — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:05:34 +0000

Thanks alot, That great tip saved me lots of time !!!

By: BruceS

BruceS — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:24:16 +0000

Many thanks. I have been looking around for this answer.

By: Petulka77

Petulka77 — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:15:08 +0000

Thnks! That is what I am looking for!

By: Dean

Dean — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:36:58 +0000

Thanks for the tip, it works great. I’m using SQL Server 2008 and I am not noticing any performance issues.

By: EK

EK — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:49:35 +0000

Thanks for writing this had a series of if statements otherwise, ta

By: Vladimir

Vladimir — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:40:40 +0000

Its what i have had problems with as well. Quick & clear solution! Thanks!

By: CLINKS

CLINKS — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:50:37 +0000

Thanks! Save me a lot of time as well!

By: Andell

Andell — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:47:04 +0000

SELECT Top (@Variable) … , actially works on SQL2005

By: John

John — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:08:20 +0000

This had me really excited, until I tried it. I concur with what the last poster wrote. I used this trick to query a table in SQL Server 2005 and my query went from less than a second with a hardcoded value for TOP, to 26 seconds (!!) using the same value in a parameterized TOP. Boo!

By: Ofer Presente

Ofer Presente — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:23:48 +0000

The parameterized top does work (only in 2005 as was stated here), but it can be very slow sometimes. I wrote a query that uses

set @Limit=40
select top (@Limit) …..

This query takes 15 seconds. When the very same query is changed to
select top (40) ….

it takes 3 seconds – 1/5 of the duration of the parameterized top!!!